Windows 8 Metro: The fall of windows or the best invention ever

unkel

BostonB wrote: »

Though I've had a few application and driver incompatibilities. But you'd expect that.

You'd expect that, but for me all programs and all drivers still worked after upgrade from 7 to 8 (consumer preview)

Only exception was Avast Antivirus as it seems MS has disabled all non-MS AV software

BostonB

For me a O2 dongle didn't work, the laptops internal Wifi card, though the USb Wifi worked ok and Cisco VPN client. Though in fairness I didn't spend much time looking for solutions.

cookie1977

Fysh wrote: »

Out of curiosity, are you on a touchscreen setup or a normal machine?

Edited to addL:

Look's like it's an August RTM date with October for general release.

No I've got it installed on a dell latitude d630 running a dual core processor. I think that because I like and know a lot of keyboard shortcuts I'm happy to navigate this way but yes a touchscreen would be even cooler.

I was initially a hater but after some time using it I think I'm going to love it.

unkel

cookie1977 wrote: »

I like and know a lot of keyboard shortcuts I'm happy to navigate this way

No need to change your ways. Plenty of free programs out there that will let you keep the familiar start menu. I'm using vistart mainly

fionny

unkel wrote: »

No need to change your ways. Plenty of free programs out there that will let you keep the familiar start menu. I'm using vistart mainly

Actually MS are actively stripping out legacy code to prevent this.

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-working-to-kill-windows-8-start-button-hacks

Blowfish

fionny wrote: »

Actually MS are actively stripping out legacy code to prevent this.

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-working-to-kill-windows-8-start-button-hacks

You don't really need legacy code to do it though, I'd be willing to bet it won't be all that long until someone writes a native app that looks and acts just like the old start menu and pins itself in it's location.

BostonB

I use Classic shell on windows 7 and 8.

MS can try all they want, but someone always finds a way.

fionny

What I dont get is WHY? why go to the effort to prevent it? Surely if people want to use a certain interface MS should accomodate them and take the extra money!

BostonB

MS has never been very logical about what it does.

gbee

fionny wrote: »

What I dont get is WHY? why go to the effort to prevent it? Surely if people want to use a certain interface MS should accomodate them and take the extra money!

Basically they want everybody to move to cloud computing and just pay licence fees into the future and actually own nothing, not even the terminals you work on.

Pay as you go computing, no privacy etc.

Stark

fionny wrote: »

What I dont get is WHY? why go to the effort to prevent it? Surely if people want to use a certain interface MS should accomodate them and take the extra money!

If people are exposing the feature then MS has to maintain the code for that feature with bug fixes and security fixes. Easier to rip out the code so you can move the developers responsible for maintaining it onto other things.

Bit annoying. I think the OS will look great on a tablet but having to go from desktop interface to Start Screen when doing anything on a desktop PC/laptop is a major PITA.

fionny

Well I know nobody who will be switching to windows 8 based on the stupid interface.

Capt'n Midnight

fionny wrote: »

What I dont get is WHY? why go to the effort to prevent it? Surely if people want to use a certain interface MS should accomodate them and take the extra money!

Historical major UI changes
Dos --> Windows 3 ( you still had a choice )
Windows 3 --> windows 95 /NT4 ( Dos dropped )
windows 95 --> XP / Fisher Price ( but left the old UI for server users )
Xp --> vista ( how long did it take you to find Programs icon in control panel ?)
7--> 8


thing is they get the extra money anyway


XP UI was interesting, because most power users changed every setting http://forums.bizhat.com/jokes-humor-forum/14327-how-install-windows-xp-5-hours-less.html

Capt'n Midnight

fionny wrote: »

Well I know nobody who will be switching to windows 8 based on the stupid interface.

I know no one who has upgraded from older versions of Ubuntu to their new interface.

But windows users have no choice when buying a new machine, lots of people out there stuck on Vista when they'd rather have had XP or 7.

fionny

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Historical major UI changes
Dos --> Windows 3 ( you still had a choice )
Windows 3 --> windows 95 /NT4 ( Dos dropped ) DOS still existed in the background of 95 and NT4 until XP
windows 95 --> XP / Fisher Price ( but left the old UI for server users )Any user could revert to a windows 98 format start bar
Xp --> vista ( how long did it take you to find Programs icon in control panel ?)Some small changes but again wasnt drastic and always maintained some level of coherence to the past
7--> 8 No legacy support and as I already stated they are actively removing and blocking it with all their every effort

The thing is historically with windows every second one sucks balls and gets sorted in the next iteration. So windows 9 will hopefully be worth looking at.

Stark

NT4 was a new OS from the ground up so never had DOS. They did provide a command line interface that looked like DOS (and still exists in NT/Vista/7). The policy for 95/98/ME with regards to DOS was to progressively remove features from DOS that might cause hassle.

bpb101

i haven’t been religiously following this so ill ask the question

What will business/developers /networking user use.
From what i can see . using the start is necessary and unavoidable

too much time looking for programs and searching for files for bunniness users. Plus its too social for a affection work place - imo

and for developers and networking - well it took me around five minutes to get to the control panel and i didn’t actual click control panel . i think i went into documents and used the drop down bar
Although it will become quicker and easier to find things after the months having to completely fill your screen with this new start menu before launching a program will always be a pain in the H***

Stark

bpb101 wrote: »

Although it will become quicker and easier to find things after the months having to completely fill your screen with this new start menu before launching a program will always be a pain in the H***

Yeah the nicest thing about Windows 95 (and all subsequent versions) for me was not having to Alt-tab to fill your screen with the Program Manager in order to access your applications. This feels like a retrograde step.

Blowfish

bpb101 wrote: »

i haven’t been religiously following this so ill ask the question

What will business/developers /networking user use.
From what i can see . using the start is necessary and unavoidable

too much time looking for programs and searching for files for bunniness users. Plus its too social for a affection work place - imo

and for developers and networking - well it took me around five minutes to get to the control panel and i didn’t actual click control panel . i think i went into documents and used the drop down bar
Although it will become quicker and easier to find things after the months having to completely fill your screen with this new start menu before launching a program will always be a pain in the H***

There's no difference in speed at all between metro and the start menu. In both, you press the Win key and type what you are looking for.

As for the 'social' stuff, you can disable a lot of it with GPO.

Sonics2k

Thinking of joining in on the consumer preview, as I plan on upgrading to it W8 on release anyway.

My only major questions are;

How stable is it?
Will it affect my pictures, music, movies and documents?
Will Google Chrome work, or do I have to resort back to IE!
Most importantly, I've seen people can have issues with Skype when using the W8 preview, does anyone know if this has been fixed yet?

cookie1977

If you're worried I wouldn't try it.

Blowfish

Sonics2k wrote: »

How stable is it?

I haven't ever had it completely crash on me at all. There've been a few bugs with Metro apps not working (UAC off, low resolution, buggy Nvidia drivers) but other than that it's been pretty good.

Sonics2k wrote: »

Will it affect my pictures, music, movies and documents?

Upgrading from consumer preview to release preview wipes everything, but apparently upgrading from Win 7 etc. works fine and keeps settings and files, though I haven't tried it myself as I have it running in a VM.

Sonics2k wrote: »

Will Google Chrome work, or do I have to resort back to IE!

Chrome works fine, in fact it's the first browser outside of IE to work in metro mode.

Sonics2k wrote: »

Most importantly, I've seen people can have issues with Skype when using the W8 preview, does anyone know if this has been fixed yet?

This I can't say as I haven't tried yet.

[edit] I will say, the one issue I have run into that can be annoying is pretty high dpc latency. I'm hoping this is just due to it being pre-release versions so a lot of the debug hooks will still be there.

Sonics2k

Thanks Blowfish.

I'll do a backup and copy all the important files to an external hard drive for now.

Sonics2k

All right,

I've been on Windows 8 for some 24 hours now, and I have to say, I actually quite like it. Been testing it on a laptop using a Touch Pad, not Touch Screen.

1) It's actually quite smooth, installation was simple and smooth.
2) Didn't take me long to get used to the new interface, then again I have been using Windows since 95, and it's all quite similar.
3) 'Loss' of the Start button is a non-issue, it's still right there, it's just moved to the other side.
4) New start screen is quite nice. I imagine it'll be even nicer on a tablet.
5) I found it aesthetically pleasing, smooth, and very much in line with the modern style of UI.

All in all, I personally plan on buying W8 when it's out, though it certainly does not seem to be an essential upgrade for the average user.

For the "average" user, it may seem quite intimidating as it's so different to what the normal layout has been on PC's for so long.

fionny

Sonics2k wrote: »

For the "average" user, it may seem quite intimidating as it's so different to what the normal layout has been on PC's for so long.

For a way above "average" user its a ****ty interface for traditional keyboard and mouse setup imo.

Blowfish

fionny wrote: »

For a way above "average" user its a ****ty interface for traditional keyboard and mouse setup imo.

Seriously though, why do people keep saying this?

The Desktop is still there and for power users the start menu functions exactly as it does now. If it annoys you that much, you can even

Aesthetically, sure, some people may not like it, but functionally there really, really isn't all that much of a difference.

fionny

People keep saying it because people feel that way. The metro interface is fullscreen as everyone knows and it takes you OUT of what you were doing. It not intuitive in the least. A business / power user has no need for all those poxy tiles. Function over Form thanks,

Sure you can use Metro instead of the Start menu by using the search function, but hitting the Win key will take you out of your desktop to do it. It reminds me of Windows 3.1 where you had to switch back to the Program Manager to open anything. Sounds more like a step backwards to me.

Blowfish

fionny wrote: »

People keep saying it because people feel that way. The metro interface is fullscreen as everyone knows and it takes you OUT of what you were doing.

You get back in just as quickly as in previous versions though.

fionny wrote: »

It not intuitive in the least. A business / power user has no need for all those poxy tiles. Function over Form thanks,

How is it Form over Function though? It has the exact same function as Win 7, in fact it's now expanded as the search indexes far more now and it integrates directly with your apps too (e.g. type search term, Chrome will pop up just below where you are searching, click on Chrome and it'll use Chrome to search the web for your term).

Also, a couple of handy tricks:

Win+X when on the Desktop opens an 'admin' menu so you can load a lot of the control panel stuff very quickly.

Win+D opens the Desktop from wherever you are

You can get it to boot to Desktop instead of Metro by putting in a scheduled task for Explorer to run on logon,

I get why people say they may not like the UI aesthetically, it's definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea (I'm actually still undecided myself) but from a functional perspective I'm not seeing the huge loss that some people seem to be.

Sonics2k

fionny wrote: »

For a way above "average" user its a ****ty interface for traditional keyboard and mouse setup imo.

I don't see how. I'm very familiar with the Windows system and have been using it for years, I use a computer a lot and am certainly above the average user.

I really think a lot of the bashing is people who are simply afraid of change, and W8 is really no harder to use than W7 or XP.

All that's -really- changed is the shape and size of the Start Menu.

I agree the tab system could be better, but that's just a matter of feedback really.